My Opinion on Swain

So, so far I have played 11 ranked games of Swain and have won all of em. I feel I should mention these were all in p3-p1 mmr, so the players were relatively good. I'll break this into a few sections.

• Laning HIs laning phase is meh, as he doesn't trade that well unless he lands his e and then follows up with the rest of his kit. But this uses up a lot of mana. Ideally, you'd like to just straight up q the enemy champion; however, due to your range, you will get out traded in most cases. He does however, have some of the best gank potential in the game. If your jungler, lets say Elise, lands her cocoon, you then pop your passive, bring her closer to you, e and w, and the enemy champion is then cc'd for days. Imo, Swain is one of the best champions to gank and at lvl 6 there's almost no duo you and your jungler can't 2v2. Speaking of level 6, swain has very little kill pressure 1v1 in lane, even at level 6 . This is because, even if your ult has enough damage to kill, you still have to wait about 3 seconds for it to do so. Which is usually enough time for the enemy to react and flash away...or just walk away. If i had to propose a change, I'd recommend allowing Swain to pop his ult damage as soon as he activates it, but only for half the damage, or have the damage dealt be proportionate to the amount of health you have drained. You lane well against mid range champs, but heavily struggle against people like Yasuo, Xerath, Vel, and Fizz (rush abyssal)

• Skirmishes and Teamfights This is where Swain excels. His passive and e makes it really easy to make picks or single out targets in skirmishes. Swain in teamfights, plays a lot like Vlad or Karthus in that you just want to get into the middle of the enemy team and cause hell and that's exactly what you do. Assuming you get rylais, which you should, your ult applies a constant slow to the entirety of the enemy team. There have been times where I'll land my e on an enemy, pop my ult, and then flash zhonya into the enemy team. The bulk of the enemy team is not only slowed and/or rooted, but also taking consistent damage from my ult. Provided your team follows up, you then unleash your likely charged ult and you have likely hit most nearby targets for more than half of their hp bar. This isn't always an optimal play, but this just illustrates how strong swain can be in teamfights. Something else to mention is that Swain's demon form lasts for 12 seconds, and for each second of the ult, you heal for about 200 health per champion, assuming there's 3-4 champs nearby, you are healing for 600-800 health per second for a maximum of 12 seconds. This is not factoring in a possible spirit visage.

• Rune and Build Paths Honestly, swain's rune and build path is very versatile depending on what you want. Phase Rush, Spellbook (for early tp and lower ghost cd), Electrocute (pretty easy to proc and ravenous hunter works well with his kit), and Glacial Augment. All of these can work but I find Glacial augment to really only be useful early as you will undoubtedly build a rylais. As far as itemization goes, your first item will either be ROA, GLP, or Abyssal. Build abyssal when you're facing up against something like fizz, diana, akali, and leblanc. GLP when you want the slow but don't want to wait for rylais, also allows you to be a bit more aggressive in lane, I'd recommend following this up immediately with liandrys then zhonyas and rylais. Go ROA when neither of these two are the cases. There are some games where I will build spirit visage, but this is usually only when enemy team has heavy ap and we don't need a strong damage threat from mid. If you do build spirit visage, I'd say build it as your 3rd item.

All in all, my biggest problem with Swain is the lack of kill pressure in lane, when his late game isn't like ryze/azir level. It's more approximate to orianna.

Tl:dr

Swain has a decent laining strong phase with strong gank potential, but excels in teamfights and skirmishes. He has a very versatile rune se up and item build.

If you have questions or suggestions or input, feel free to state them![vlad-salute]